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4 replies

When they turn on the "crazy."

yakusokuyakusokuMember
So, as you may have noticed, I have a lot of hurt from my mom's abuse, but also a lot of sympathy, because I see her as a very broken person. Perhaps I should call it empathy, because I can relate.

I was just remembering that years ago (I think when I was a teenager), she told me about being in a hotel bar after work. Something was wrong with her and she was very sick and had some sort of lump or something. And then she met this guy, but he wasn't a man, he was a man of God (translation: she explained he was an angel). Anyway, long-story-short, she slept with him at the hotel and doing that "healed" her and took away whatever her illness was. So, not that I don't believe in miraculous healings and the like, but that sounded pretty whacked out to me. She has other stories like that too, beyond the craziness of threatening suicide and seeming to have her own reality where things happened differently than anyone else remembers. My mom had a breakdown when I was very little and apparently my grandpa had to go into a psych ward for a short period in his 50s, because he thought he was a lion (went around on all fours roaring at people). My oldest sister has similar sorts of stories, usually regarding aliens or ghosts.

1. Does anyone else have family members who routinely lose contact with reality like this, but are otherwise as "functional" as severely dysfunctional people can be?

2. Do you ever get afraid that something inside you will break and you will do the same? I do...all the time. I often wonder if I'm already there and living in a different reality.

3. What do you do when they decide it's necessary to share this stuff with you? Do you just nod and say, "Oh..."? Do you suggest they get help?

It hasn't happened to me lately, except my sister telling me a story that she already had. But, I really feel paralyzed whenever someone I know seems to be disconnected from any remote experience I've ever had of reality. I don't want to be judgmental about it. It's not like I know everything and will admit I could be wrong. It just makes me very confused, especially when it is something I witnessed or experienced and the other person remembers it differently. I start to wonder if maybe *I'm* crazy...
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room2growroom2growCo-moderator
Yaku, I can't exactly speak to all of this, but I can tell you a very recent (last week) experience with my mom that is kind of the opposite, but the same. To the questions:

1. My sister lives out of the country, and comes in for a visit once a year. This past summer she came in for her usual visit, and the first week my mother was completely psychotic - suicide attempt, assaulted my father, damaged lots of stuff in the house, locked herself in her room, etc. She should have been hospitalized, but wasn't, cause no one (including me) called the cops for a psych hold. When she brought up that my sister is planning her summer trip, I flat out asked her if she'd be able to handle it better this summer and she asked, completely innocently, why? I gently reminded her of her breakdown this past summer, and she had absolutely no recollection of it. At all. None. Nothing. Nada. Zip. I was dumbfounded. I felt like the crazy one imagining it all!

2. All the time. I have already brought this up several times with my T - I don't want to turn out like my mom. I am terrified that I will end up like her (she does have some good qualities, don't get me wrong, but the bad so outweigh the good.) My T reminds me that it will not be possible for me to end up like my mom, because I'm already different than her by recognizing the issues and working through them in therapy.

3. My dad really tries to use me as a therapist, and for a while, I was ok with that because it fit into my role of caregiver. As I got healthier (through therapy and al-anon) I realized how backward it was - my dad coming to me, his daughter, for help with my mom, his wife. So now when he starts to vent to me, I politely cut him off and tell him that I can give him the numbers for some good counselors, but I can't help him with this. I do the same thing with my sister as well. My brother doesn't talk about any of the family stuff at all, so it doesn't come up with him. And my mom? She's already in therapy Smiler

quote:
It just makes me very confused, especially when it is something I witnessed or experienced and the other person remembers it differently. I start to wonder if maybe *I'm* crazy...
Yup. I get this too. My T reminded me that I am not the crazy one, I felt that way because I grew up "normal" surrounded by crazy, which then made me feel crazy since I was the oddball!
S sadlyMember
I wrote a reply but it got lost, yet again.
I have little to say becos no, i have not had such crazyiness with my family, just weirdness - until my mother went senile and then she made up anything and everything. But it sounds very hard to handle. I too would wonder if I was going to end up the same. My first therapist told me that if I did go crazy - I would not know I was crazy and that there was some consolation in that. but then she added that if we are people who are insightful and self aware, true craziness is unlikely. And I have not gone crazy yet, except for the post I had on my blog a few months ago where someone wanted to point out that i was definately crazy which upset me and made me close down my blog for a bit.

But then I realised that that person was worse off than I, as she had no compassion, empathy or understanding of how amazing we are to survive what we go through and come out as well as we do.

So I think you are well aware of the oddness in your family and will obviously keep checking for signs of it in yourself but your T will point it out if you slip that way. Smiler Thank you for posting about it.

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